


What Kid is This

by lydiduh



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 05:20:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2055159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydiduh/pseuds/lydiduh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the annual night the Banana Stand gets dumped in the harbor, a young Gob Bluth runs away from home to the only person he knows for sure will put up with putting him up-- the family lawyer. Gen other than some hints of Barry/George Sr.; some shades of Barry being a creep, but what do you expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Kid is This

Barry is at the front of the house, talking to George Sr. The latter's voice from the doorway is too low to make out as more than a mumble, so really only Barry's side of the conversation-- always a little too loud and sharp, like he's in the middle of a bad joke-- is audible from two rooms over.

"--At least they were able to recover most of it before there was too much damage. And I think we've all learned a lesson about keeping our valuables in a structure that gets dumped in the ocean once a year. I hope you're taking notes about all this."

Mumble?

"Because my only good notebook is at the bottom of the bay and I haven't heard back about the insurance claim yet, so I haven't been able to."

Mumble mumble.

"No, not tonight," Barry says, his tone shifting. "I've got work to do."

M- _umble._

"No, _real_ work to do, you dog. I've got a trial in the morning-- okay."

Mumble.

Then there's a pause that lasts a little too long, and then the door closes and Barry re-enters the living room.

"Did he ask about me?" Gob asks from the couch immediately. He also resumes eating the cereal that Barry has set him up with for dinner now that there's nobody around to be alerted to his presence by the crunching.

"Yes, he was all a tizzy," Barry replies flatly, disappearing through the door to his bedroom and reappearing a few moments later, transformed from the Bluth family's sharply dressed lawyer to a greying man in his late thirties in sweatpants and a robe that nearly matched the one he had lent Gob (though they each had a different girls' name embroidered in the front pocket.)

"You don't have to be sarcastic, I figured he wouldn't ask about me anyway," Gob says, sullenly picking around for crunchberries with his spoon.

"I know your father," Barry says after a moment. "And your father knows you. If he thought that there was a chance that you were out somewhere seriously getting in trouble... sure, he'd be concerned. But as it is he knows that you're just a sixteen-year-old blowing off some steam and you'll turn up in a few days."

Barry isn't nearly as certain about that as he wants to seem, and on some level Gob knows that it's a good portion of wishful thinking. However, the entire running-away-from-home business has been so much of a bust at this point that he has to comfort himself with something.

"And you will turn up in a few days, right?" Barry adds sharply as he flops on to the couch next to Gob and turns the volume back up on the TV. "I don't mind helping a friend in need but I need my living space, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah, sure," Gob says, and contents himself with the fact that he is apparently now old enough to be considered Barry's friend. Barry and he were on a very similar level, Gob thought. They jived well. Barry had always been-- or at least seemed-- fond of him in a way that George Sr. failed to be, a fondness perhaps equally fed by Gob being enthralled from early on with every unsavory detail he inadvertently stumbled upon about the family lawyer. In fact, their son's fascination with a man who'd been threatened with being listed as a sex offender multiple times by the State of California and who had probably stood at least as many trials as he worked on would probably raise some blaring red flags to more observant parents than George and Lucille. But that was asking an awful lot , and was probably one of many things that Gob wouldn't even get around to resenting in his lifetime.

Foremost in these red flag incidents would be the fact that Barry took Gob to a strip club when he was thirteen. It wasn't _that_ seedy; as it turned out he wasn't there for the strippers _themselves_ , he was just there to pick something up from a guy. But regardless, Gob had seen his first naked woman courtesy of Barry, on what was supposed to just be a quick run to Barry's office. Barry was always doing stuff like that. Michael and Lindsay, on the other hand, inexplicably never seemed to be as enthusiastic about Barry's level of spontaneity, and followed up every awesome story Gob relayed to them with "Did you tell Dad-and-or-Mom-and-or-Rosa about it...?" or, more simply, "That sounds weird."

Who cared. More for Gob.

"Why did my dad even come here if he wasn't asking about me?" Gob says a few minutes after Barry has settled on what seems to be a bad soap opera, which he is now watching intently.

"He had to drop off some paperwork about the banana stand getting dipped," Barry says quickly. For a lawyer, he's really a terrible liar, but Gob doesn't notice. "Boy, you sure picked the right day to run away, kid."

"It's Christmas."

"Whatever."

"The running away from home thing isn't working anyway," Gob says. "Not when they don't even notice that I'm gone. Besides, it's a cliche. I need something more dramatic," a pause. "Have you ever faked a death?"

"Yes. But that's not going to work if you really want to get under their skin," Barry says absently. "You need to go bigger. Try drugs."

"Tried it; didn't work. The only thing that seems to upset them at all is the magic, and that's just because they don't recognize my natural talents yet," Gob demonstrates proudly by making his spoon disappear (the half-inch still sticking out of the end of his sleeve notwithstanding.)

"Sure."

"You know if you really want to be a real disappointment to your parents," Barry says. "You could always try dancing."

"How is that disappointing?"

"You know. 'Dancing.' With your looks you'd probably make good money at it, too."

"Like--?" Gob gets it. "Guys can do that?"

"Honey, if I didn't get forced into Law School, I'd have retired with dignity by this point after a long and successful career," Barry assures him. "But don't get me wrong, I guess this worked out alright, too. Of course, you have to be at least 18-- but you're about 18 now, right?" Wink. How did nobody else love this guy?

"Huh," Gob says, and for a few minutes afterwards the two men watch trashy television together in companionable silence, until Barry eventually says "I'm gonna hit the hay," and flicks the TV off unceremoniously. "Take it easy, Gob."

"Thanks, Barry."

"Sure, kid," Barry stifles a yawn and retreats to the back bedroom, flicking out the light as he goes, and Gob, sprawled on his family's lawyer's funny smelling couch less than ten miles away from where neither his family nor his empty room are missing his absence, feels surprisingly okay.

 


End file.
